Daughter with depression

[SadCDMom]

My 20 year old daughter is suffering from depression. We don't have a close relationship at all, and I have no idea how to help her. She just let my husband and me know today that she is dropping out of college and going to live with her boyfriend.

She has a loving family who would love to support her and encourage her, but she has turned her back on everyone except her boyfriend.

Her dad and I have tried everything we know to do. Any suggestions?

Whether you have suggestions or not, would you please keep us all in your prayers, particularly my daughter?

 

[Gracanna]

I have a similar situation with my daughter.i'll be praying for you & yours!

 

[droidBebe]

My advice would be to remain patient and loving, being very consistent. And I know there have been times during my depression that I have thought everyone was against me so I refused to communicate with family. She may be experiencing some of that as well.

The worst thing you could do is get fed up and throw in the towel on her. She might give up if that happens. *I'm not saying that you would quit on her at all*

Be her light at the end of the tunnel, ready to embrace her whenever she decides to run to you.

Love and peace to you and your family!

 

[Spunkn]

My advice would be to remain patient and loving, being very consistent. And I know there have been times during my depression that I have thought everyone was against me so I refused to communicate with family. She may be experiencing some of that as well.

The worst thing you could do is get fed up and throw in the towel on her. She might give up if that happens. *I'm not saying that you would quit on her at all*

Be her light at the end of the tunnel, ready to embrace her whenever she decides to run to you.

Love and peace to you and your family!

What droidBebe said, it takes lots of patience and love when someone is going through depression. Just be willing to help them if they need it, but also be willing to let them have some space if they need that as well. It's a delicate balance.

Prayer is still one of the most powerful tools you can use.

 

[Criada]

Good advice^
Praying for her and for you

 

[SadCDMom]

Thank you so much for the advice and for the prayers. We don't want to give up on her, but there's nothing else we can do for her but pray for her and love her from a distance, at least nothing that I know to do.

droidBebe, do you feel comfortable sharing why sometimes you've felt that everyone was against you? My daughter seems to feel that way, too. I don't understand why.

You will all be in my thoughts and prayers. Thank you!

 

[droidBebe]

Thank you so much for the advice and for the prayers. We don't want to give up on her, but there's nothing else we can do for her but pray for her and love her from a distance, at least nothing that I know to do.

droidBebe, do you feel comfortable sharing why sometimes you've felt that everyone was against you? My daughter seems to feel that way, too. I don't understand why.

You will all be in my thoughts and prayers. Thank you!

Depression can make one very delusional despite what the reality is. I get extremely delusional when I'm depressed and I tend to take things ppl say or their body language in the wrong way, always seeing an attack.

 

[SadCDMom]

Sheena, thank you so much for explaining how you feel. That sounds so much like my daughter.

Her dad, her brother, her grandmother and I all love her dearly. We try to keep things positive and supportive. We try not to give her advice or ask her questions, but let her talk about what she wants to talk about.

No matter what we do, she sees us as negative people in her life. It's as if the sun is shining and she looks outside and says it's raining and cloudy.

I hope that you have people who love you in your life and that they show it to you every day, and that you see it. God bless you and keep you.

 

[droidBebe]

Sheena, thank you so much for explaining how you feel. That sounds so much like my daughter.

Her dad, her brother, her grandmother and I all love her dearly. We try to keep things positive and supportive. We try not to give her advice or ask her questions, but let her talk about what she wants to talk about.

No matter what we do, she sees us as negative people in her life. It's as if the sun is shining and she looks outside and says it's raining and cloudy.

I hope that you have people who love you in your life and that they show it to you every day, and that you see it. God bless you and keep you.

No problem! And it sounds like you're doing exactly what she needs from the ppl who care.

With depression I've spent years seeing tornadoes on beautiful spring days. Its difficult to avoid.

Actually, I just started hearing how beautiful the songs of birds are and how lovely the sunshine is last year. I used to think ppl who saw glory in those kinds of things were the ones w the real problem! LOL I'm glad I can see things differently now.

Thank you for your blessing. I hope things turn around for your daughter very soon and that your family emerges stronger than ever before.

 

[SadCDMom]

Sheena, I'm so happy for you that you're now seeing the beauty of nature. Beautiful nature is such a solace for me on difficult days and it helps me so much see the glory and loving nature of God in creation.

I will keep you in my prayers, that when you look in the mirror you will see the beautiful person that you are. Thanks for your encouragement.

 

[droidBebe]

No problem!

 

[Krissy Cakes]

I'm praying for her and you.

 

[SadCDMom]

Thank you so much, Army Wife. Please don't stop praying for her, and for me. My husband and I are meeting her and her boyfriend sometime this weekend to talk.

My husband and I are also meeting with a counselor this week to try to determine the line between enabling and supporting.

I think my daughter is going to want some type of financial support from us. My husband and I have always been of the opinion that when a young couple begins their lives together, they need to work their finances and their decisions out together, without their parents. That's not a new opinion. When my husband and I married, he was in graduate school and I was in undergraduate school. His parents would have helped us with his tuition, etc., but we felt like we should make our decisions independently, including our financial decisions.

My daughter is telling us that she didn't do well in school this semester that just finished because she couldn't get out of bed to go to class and was too depressed to do her assignments or study. Of course, she told us after the fact, not during.

My thoughts are that if this young man is planning on living with and marrying my daughter, there are realities he needs to understand now, including the financial reality of living with someone who can't function enough to get out of bed. I think we are doing them both an unkindness if we help support her while she lives with him.

My daughter also told her brother that she was looking forward to turning 21 soon so she could legally drink. Her boyfriend/fiance drinks, I know. Every birthday present my daughter got him when he turned 21 was some type of barware. I don't drink alcohol myself because I don't like the taste, but I'm not opposed to occasional social moderate drinking. But mixing alcohol and antidepressants doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

I just don't know where to draw the line on financial support. I'm seeing a lot of red flags. I can give her all the emotional support, love, affection, cheerleading that she wants. I don't think she wants emotional support, just financial.

So yes, please, please pray for me. Whatever decisions my husband and I make, we have to be able to live with those decisions if my daughter continues to spiral downward. It is so hard to know what to do.

 

[Spunkn]

Depression's a pretty serious issue. I dropped out of High School, and two colleges because of it. For the longest time my parents were extremely confused about what to do about it, or how to help. In some situations, you can't do much to help. The depressed person will push everyone away, and you can't force them to accept help. You can just be there, for when they do reach out for help.

In the case of her living with her boyfriend, that's not a good situation as you've pointed out. I think you should tell her, that you will offer financial help for her, if she is willing to put the relationship with her boyfriend on hold for now(dont tell her she has to give it up permanently, that'll just make her upset). You would support her, and help her get some help for this depression, but she has to take some steps to show that she's willing to work on it.

Mixing alcohol, anti-depressants, and depression is just a recipe for disaster.

If she refuses to budge with living with her boyfriend, I'm not sure you can really do much. In choosing that, she is still showing that she's not ready to accept the gravity of the situation and change things.

Continue to let her know that you love her and care about her, but you may have to give her some space as well. Unfortunately the reality is, sometimes people have to reach the bottom themselves, before they realize that they need help.

 

[SadCDMom]

Splunkn, thank you so much for your reply. I appreciate any insight you can give me.

My daughter pushes everyone away except her boyfriend. You've heard of rose-colored glasses? She seems like she has some kind of special dark gray-colored glasses. We've lived in the same neighborhood all her life. She does not have a single friend from the neighborhood, elementary school, middle school, high school. She's gone to 3 colleges (1 college just for a single summer course while she lived at home for the summer). She does not have a single friend she made on her own from college. Her only friends are friends of her boyfriend. She pushes everyone away unless they are a friend of his, and she doesn't like many of his friends, either. So it's not just us, her parents, that she pushes away.

I don't know how to help her. We've tried family counseling, we've paid for her to go to counseling on her own. We've tried to spare her from financial stress. She goes to a high stress college with a high stress major (engineering), but we've told her it's fine with us if she wants to pick an easier college and/or easier major if she doesn't want to deal with the stress. Or if she just wants to take some time off from school, it's fine.

We have "safe" places and times where we talk, where we go out and eat lunch or dinner and we don't ask any questions, keep everything positive and only talk about what she wants to talk about.

She's asked for freedom and privacy and we've given it to her. It doesn't seem to matter what we do, she falls apart no matter what we do.

She says she can't live with us, it is too hard with her depression, that she needs to be with her boyfriend. At this point I just don't know what else to do. We've paid for her to live in dorms and were going to pay for her to live in an apartment with a friend this summer. I want to draw the line at helping her live with her boyfriend. We would never tell her to give up her relationship with her boyfriend. He is a decent guy and loves her. He treats her well, his family treats her well. They are engaged to be married and he will graduate college in December. She uses him as a crutch and a shield, and he enables her all the time and has since she was in the 11th grade, but that is something they will both have to find out for themselves as they get older.

I love her so much, I would do almost anything to help her. However, I suspect at this point she needs to be left to deal with the consequences she creates.

She has apologized many times for the way she treats us. I see her struggling to communicate better. She is attractive, smart, talented, funny, and very kind-hearted when she isn't focused on her own pain. It is so hard to watch her make such self-destructive choices over and over again. But they are her choices to make.

I would so love for someone who had struggled with depression and has a loving, supportive family to tell me what his/her family did to help. I don't know anything else to do but, like you said, just be there if she changes her mind about our help. I just have a problem with the financial help being expected but no emotional help and no communication, just hand over the money.

Thanks for listening.

 

[Spunkn]

It's not easy. I went through 15 years of it. And there was a lot of pain and heartache. Depression makes you isolate. It makes you feel as if you're the only person in the world going through the pain you're feeling. It makes you feel sad around other people. They seem happy, and have it altogether. People smiling remind you that you are in pain. Couples remind you that you are alone. Parents remind you that your family thinks your a failure. Which isn't true, but that's the way your mind thinks.

Has she tried any medications? That made a huge difference for me. It was like night and day.

Like you said though, she's holding on to her boyfriend as the last thing that she feels safe with, and eventually that's going to crumble as well. All you can do is love her, and let know her know that you care about her, and will be there for her.

It's difficult to let things go, and let God take control. But God is still sovereign, and prayer is one of the most powerful tools you have. I know my family, and many other people were praying for me for a long time.

I tried forever to correct things on my own, and failed time after time making things worse and worse. Eventually I had to reach the bottom, where I finally had to acknowledge that God was the only one who could get me out of it, that I needed Him and I couldn't do it myself.

I pray that God would be able to find her some help. It's an awful illness.

 

[RuthD]

You are good to support your daughter in her depression. I never got any emotional help from my family when depressed. They just tired of me and I got worse and worse until I got counseling and on antidepressants plus another med that helps the antidepressant. She needs to know that she is worthwhile and not a failure like I thought I was. I am praying for her and you and the family. All the best to you.

 

[Zvelsxip]

SadCDMom My name is as you see, for the purpose of my mission in Life. I found your message and now will suggest some things that I use to help heal people and souls. Your actions are yours my truth is what I give you.

Two Options:
1. As you have reached with a heavy heart for help, and IF You Truly believe that Jesus IS and GOD IS and Resurrection IS True then the "water" that is within You is Holy and True. Of this water from your mouth wet not soak a white cloth napkin, and on the next encounter with your daughter place it in her bag or pocket without her knowledge and in Your Mind say "I give her to You Lord, Help Her find her way back"

2. If you feel an "anointing" and wish for me to reach out then do the following:
You will need to reply back with information I prescribe:
a. Think of Her name and create a name that you will call her and send me that name
b. Describe her but only her eyes, her face, her hair as i know she is 20 by your posting
c. In your mind think of her when she was 12, and relate that to a color, send that in your reply.
d. Tell me what is the farthest distance she has walked
e. Finally How many times has she started to read the Bible and stopped, maybe at the same reading.
Do #2 only if #1 is not done.
I will get a message if you reply.
This offer is open until 11PM May 11 2013.

God Bless Oh Yea that Love the Lord